"Get it down. I'll take the Branson house and the offices. Anything develops, I want a tag, pronto." She yanked out her communicator when it signaled. "Dallas."
"Sergeant Howard, Search and Rescue. My divers found something. I think you'll want to see this."
"Send through your location. I'm on my way." She glanced toward McNab. As he rose, Peabody stepped forward.
"Sir, I know you have reason to keep me off this part of the investigation. I don't believe those reasons are valid at this time. I request, respectfully, to accompany you as your aide."
Eve considered, tapped her fingers on her thigh. "Are you going to keep talking to me that way? All tight-assed and formal, using long, polite sentences?"
"If I don't get what I want, yes, sir."
"I admire a good threat," Eve decided. "You're with me, Peabody."
• • •
The wind whipped like a nest of angry snakes and had the
ugly water of the river churning. Eve stood on the scarred and littered dock, cold to the bone, as one of the search team uncovered the body.
"We probably wouldn't have come on it for days if you hadn't told us to start looking for a mechanical. Even with that, we got lucky. You wouldn't fucking believe what people dump in this river."
He crouched down with her. "Looks a hell of a lot better than a floater would by this time. No bloat, no decay. Fish gave him a try, but they don't get off on synthetics."
"Yeah." She could see the nicks and dents where fish had taken nibbling samples. One had apparently given the left eye a hell of a go before giving up. But the diver was right; he looked a hell of a lot better than a floater.
He looked like B. Donald Branson—handsome and fit, if considerably bedraggled. She used a fingertip on the chin to turn the head, then studied the massive damage to the back of the skull.
"When I saw it down there, I thought the sensors were whacked. Never seen a droid this good before. Wouldn't have known for sure it wasn't a fresh dead guy if it wasn't for the hand."
Somewhere along the line, the wrist had been injured enough to split the skin casing. The structure, riddled with sensors and chips, showed clearly.
"Of course, when we got him out and gave him a good look-see in the light—"
"Yeah, doesn't quite fit the bill. You get pictures?"
"Oh, you bet."
"We'll just get some to back up the record. Then I'll need it bagged and sealed and shipped to the lab. Get all angles, Peabody."
Eve rose, moved to the side, and called Feeney. "I'm sending this droid into the lab. I need someone from EDD to go in and work with Dickhead's team. I want to run his programming back. Can we interface with our system? Get a playback of the night Zeke was there?"
"Might."
"And can we dig in enough to get a time frame for the programming and the programmer?"
"It's not impossible. Much damage?"
She glanced back as Peabody got the crater in the skull on record. "Considerable."
"We'll do what we can. Does this put Zeke out of it?"
"No law against killing a droid. He could get it on destruction of property, but I don't think the Bransons will pursue that angle."
Feeney smiled. "Good work. Want me to tell him?"
"No." She looked back at Peabody. "Let him hear it from his sister." She pocketed her communicator and signaled to Peabody. "We're done here. Let's move."
"Dallas." She walked over, laid a hand on Eve's arm. "I was afraid when we came down here. Afraid you'd been wrong. I knew, in my head, that even if it was Branson, it would go down as an accident, just the way Zeke said. He wouldn't have gone to jail, but he'd have paid for it. All his life."